The Key To Small Business Success: Don't Die
While this isn't directly game-related, for those who are currently making indie games commercially, or those to aspire to do so, this may be of value. Paul Graham, a VC who funds several startups, makes an interesting suggestion for how to get rich and successful with a startup business: Just don't die.

How Not To Die

He states, "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it's actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup. It certainly describes what happened in Viaweb. We avoided dying till we got rich."

He points out several of the symptoms of a company that's about to flounder and die. And then makes the radical suggestion of treating those symptoms directly to keep the company alive.

For example, a major symptom of an ailing, soon-to-be-dead company is that they cease communicating (he focuses on communicating with their funding partners, but I think this applies across the board). His suggestion? Keep communicating. A lot. He suggests, "That may not be so naive as it sounds. You've probably noticed that having dinners every Tuesday with us and the other founders causes you to get more done than you would otherwise, because every dinner is a mini Demo Day. Every dinner is a kind of a deadline. So the mere constraint of staying in regular contact with us will push you to make things happen, because otherwise you'll be embarrassed to tell us that you haven't done anything new since the last time we talked... If this works, it would be an amazing hack. It would be pretty cool if merely by staying in regular contact with us you could get rich. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance that would work."

Gee, maybe the whole idea of blogging weekly about my game-in-progress isn't such a dumb idea after all..!

Anyway, there's a bunch of information in there that might be adaptable to a small, indie game business. Take a look and see what you think!

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink)